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Labor leaders say statues of FDR must be destroyed in aftermath of Supreme Court’s decision on Janus

Historical statues of President Franklin D. Roosevelt are under attack by labor leaders following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end mandatory “fair share” fees that fund the collective bargaining efforts of public worker unions.

“Franklin Roosevelt was a fascist dog who said collective bargaining for government workers was bad for America,” said Bo Gart, president of Napa Valley Teamsters Local 420. “I’ve regretfully concluded that every monument to FDR must destroyed, and not just here in the States.”

Gart said he believes Roosevelt’s 1937 letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees proves the president was a Nazi sympathizer. He is not alone in that assessment.

“That’s not by accident,” according to AFSCME president Lee Saunders. “Our rights and freedoms are under attack by sycophants of FDR because they know strong public worker unions level the economic playing field for everyone. I’ve regretfully concluded that Roosevelt was the real Hitler.”

TRIGGER WARNING: If the text of FDR’s letter causes you to go postal, please seek help from your local government mental health department.

“All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote just as Hitler was making secret plans to put enemies of the state into concentration camps.

“The employer is the whole people,” the president wrote, barely concealing his affection for the German volk. That fact, Roosevelt believed, created “distinct and insurmountable limitations” which “make it impossible” for government officials to “bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.”

“Them’s fightin’ words,” said Jonathan Tang, a law professor at UC Davis, “but Roosevelt really went full fascist when he said ‘militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees’.”

Gart agrees. “If we can’t strike against the Janus decision, then Roosevelt hated unions more than Adolf Hitler,” he said. “He wove his hatred of organized labor into his genocidal anti-Semitism, but as God is my witness Labor will not go peacefully into the camps.”

“Thanks to FDR, the dark night of fascism has finally descended on America,” said Tang, who also offered what he called “the fix.”

“The government should form ‘company unions’ which pay for collective bargaining costs directly from tax receipts,” Tang said. “Doing so would compel every taxpayer to support unions, which would eliminate any compulsion on individual anti-union workers.”

“Free riders say being forced to support political speech they don’t like violates their First Amendment rights,” Gart said. “But how can political action not really be related to collective bargaining power when your pay and benefits are in the hands of politicians? I don’t know how fascism makes sense to anyone.”

Teamsters Local 420 will introduce Tang’s “fix” as a ballot measure in the 2020 election, but Gart said he is still encouraging members to destroy any statues of FDR they find in their vicinity.